Driving Digital Success with Acquia Convert and Human-Centric Insights

This article was written by Daniel Knauf, Chief Technology Officer

As the Chief Technology Officer at Material, I have witnessed firsthand the seismic shifts taking place within the digital experience landscape. The advent of cutting-edge tools like Acquia Convert and the transformative power of Generative AI (GenAI) have revolutionized how we engage with customers.

However, amidst this technological revolution, one fundamental truth remains: deeply understanding our customers is the cornerstone of any successful deployment of these powerful tools. The combination of human understanding and modern technology enables us to build transformative experiences with deep relevance to customers’ behaviors, preferences and motivations – forging powerful, enduring connections.

Acquia’s Role in Enhancing Customer Experience

Material has a strategic partnership with Acquia, leveraging their robust digital experience platform (DXP) to optimize customer experiences. And with the recent addition of Acquia Digital Experience Optimization (DXO), Acquia offers a suite of tools that provide unparalleled capabilities to deliver personalized user experiences through the creation of targeted, data-driven strategies.

In particular, Acquia Convert, powered by VWO, has been a game-changer. This tool allows us to create A/B, multivariate and split URL tests to conduct comprehensive experiments, understand customer behaviors and fine-tune our digital strategies with precision. By using Bayesian statistics (a method that updates our predictions as new data and evidence become available), we can dynamically allocate traffic and measure the effectiveness of various web elements, ensuring every interaction is optimized for engagement and conversion.

GenAI: The Next Frontier in Customer Experience

GenAI represents the next frontier in transforming customer experiences. Its ability to create personalized content at scale is unmatched, allowing brands to deliver highly tailored interactions across more touchpoints than ever before. Platforms like ChatGPT and other AI models can generate conversational responses, content and recommendations that reflect individual user preferences.

However, the deployment of GenAI must be handled with care. Without a deep understanding of customer needs and behaviors, AI-driven interactions risk being generic, impersonal and irrelevant. At Material, we believe that the true power of GenAI lies in its ability to augment human understanding and creativity, not replace it.

The Importance of Deep Human Understanding

Before deploying advanced tools like Acquia Convert or GenAI, it is imperative to develop a deep understanding of our customers. This involves analyzing quantitative data alongside qualitative insights into their motivations, preferences and pain points. At Material, we employ a comprehensive approach to customer understanding that combines data engineering, analytics and human-centered design.

1. Data Engineering and Analytics: Our data engineering team ensures we have a robust infrastructure to collect, process and analyze customer data. We use advanced analytics to identify patterns and trends, providing a solid foundation for our digital strategies.

2. Human-Centered Design: Beyond the data, we engage directly with customers through interviews, surveys and usability testing. This helps us uncover the ‘why’ behind the data, providing human context and depth to our understanding.

A significant differentiator for Material is our Center for Human Understanding, a team dedicated to investigating and deeply understanding the intricacies of human behavior and preferences. Through sophisticated methodologies and advanced analytics, we gain profound insights into what drives our customers – providing a foundation for digital experience strategies.

Our Center for Human Understanding combines traditional research techniques with cutting-edge technology to provide a holistic view of the customer. This includes ethnographic studies, in-depth interviews and real-time data analytics, all aimed at uncovering the deeper motivations and needs of our audience.

Integrating Customer Insights with Advanced Tools

Once we have built a comprehensive foundation of customer understanding, we integrate these insights into our use of tools like Acquia Convert and GenAI. This integration ensures that our digital experiences are not only optimized for performance but also deeply resonant for our audience. Two specific use cases stand out.

1. Personalization at Scale: By leveraging customer insights, we use Acquia Convert to create highly personalized experiences. This involves tailoring content, offers and interactions to individual behaviors and preferences, enhancing engagement and boosting conversion rates.

2. AI-Augmented Creativity: Generative AI can be employed to enhance creative processes, generating dynamic, personalized content and interactive AI-driven experiences that are both relevant and compelling. Since these systems rely on human inputs, it’s essential that our use of GenAI tools be informed by deep insights and an understanding of the types of experiences that will be relevant and valuable to customers. This ensures our GenAI explorations are in service of real human needs.

The Future of Digital Experience

As we look to the future, the fusion of deep customer understanding with advanced digital tools will define the next era of customer experience. At Material, we are committed to staying at the forefront of this evolution, continuously refining our strategies to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers.

While the tools and technologies we use are crucial, they are only as effective as the insights that drive them. With a human-centric approach to advanced tools like Acquia Convert and Generative AI, we ensure our digital experiences are not only innovative but also deeply resonant and emotionally impactful.

Let’s engage in a conversation about the future of customer experience.